The Wonder Chamber

by Mary Malloy

  The answer came soon enough. Jackie called to tell her that the Boston Globe website had the story in advance of their print edition, and Jimmy rather sheepishly approached her to tell her that he had gotten a number of messages from friends who knew he was working on the exhibit and had seen the story on numerous Internet sites. When she looked at her own email at the end of the workday there were more than twenty messages, including several from local television stations and both the Boston Globe and the New York Times. There was also a message from the director of public relations for the College, saying he would like to speak to her about how to respond to the story. Reluctantly, she picked up her phone and called him; he said he would come right over, with Cosimo Gonzaga and Father O’Toole, who were in his office.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she said. She wished for the old days of a heavy phone with a receiver that could be slammed onto the hook, but she sensed that she was being watched by Jimmy and Roscoe, who were now the only other people left in the room.

  “I promise you I didn’t say anything,” Jimmy said, his voice a mixture of fear and hope. Roscoe quietly echoed the comment.

  She looked at the two young men who had come to stand before her and assured them that she didn’t hold either of them responsible. “Once a police report got filed someone was bound to see it,” she said. “I trust both of you. Don’t worry.” She tried to sound calm, even assured. “You guys have worked so hard and I appreciate it.” She told them they should go, as she didn’t want them here when Cosimo Gonzaga arrived.

  The door swung out as they left, and back in with Cosimo Gonzaga, Father O’Toole, and the college’s PR director.

  The three men greeted her politely. Cosimo was even friendly.

  “Elizabeta,” he said, kissing her hand. He had never called her that when she met him in Bologna.

  “Cosimo,” she said, nodding her head. “I’m glad to see you again, I’m just sorry about this weird business with the mummy.”

  “Have you figured out who it is?” Father O’Toole asked her.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry Father. I don’t even know where to start on this.”

  Cosimo took her arm and walked a few steps with her. “Let us talk about this and see what we can come up with.”

  Lizzie allowed him to lead her further away from the other men, on the pretext that they were looking at various parts of the collection spread out on the tables.

  When he spoke again it was very softly and directly into her ear. “It was Patrizio you know.”

  Lizzie gave a very slight nod. “I know,” she whispered back. “But I can’t believe he murdered her.”

  “Then what?”

  “He mummified her.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.” She pulled away from him, and turned around.

  Father O’Toole and his companion were pretending to give them privacy, but it was obvious that the priest was very tuned in to what was happening on the far side of the room.

  Cosimo smiled broadly. “Do you gentlemen mind if I take Professor Manning to dinner?” he asked.

  The PR man began to say that they still needed to agree on how information about the mummy would be shared with the press, but Father O’Toole gave him a look that silenced him.

  “Of course,” said the priest. “And when you are finished, Lizzie, I’d like you to call me and give me an update on what is happening with the exhibit.”

  She nodded. While the three men made plans to meet again the following day, Lizzie called Martin to tell him that she wouldn’t be home for dinner. “Cosimo Gonzaga is in town,” she said cheerfully for her audience in the room, “and we’re going to catch up.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Martin said.

  “Oh it is,” she said, again in a lighthearted tone.

  “Do you need me to come meet you?”

  “No thank you dear, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Okay then. Text me if you need me.”

  Lizzie looked up to find herself being scrutinized by each of the men in the room. She flashed her brightest innocent smile and asked Cosimo if he wanted Italian or something else. “I have a friend who has a very nice restaurant in the North End.”

  He nodded his assent and said goodbye to Father O’Toole, agreeing that they would meet again the following morning.

  Cosimo had a limousine waiting outside, and insisted that Lizzie get into the backseat, despite her protestations that it would be easier to take her own car. She could not keep images from various gangster movies from flying through her brain. At least she wasn’t told to sit in the front seat.

  Neither Cosimo nor his driver asked Lizzie for a destination. In fact, the driver didn’t get into the car after closing the door behind Cosimo, but rather stepped aside so the two could talk privately.

  “As I said,” Cosimo started abruptly, “this was Patrick’s doing.”

  “What was?” Lizzie asked. “Do you really think he killed a woman?”

  “You said that you think he might have mummified her. Why?”

  Lizzie suddenly felt very foolish. “I am sorry I said anything. It’s just that he told me he was interested in mummies, had been to Egypt, and even knew how to make one.”

  “But why would he?”

  “As an experiment maybe?”

  Cosimo suggested he might have done it to hide a murder.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Lizzie asked him, worried about being brought into a dangerous secret with Cosimo.

  “I don’t know,” Cosimo answered grimly. “But right now you know as much about him, and about my family, as anyone. I want to resolve this without the police, if possible, and the research you have already done, and can do, might lead to the fastest and cleanest solution.” He smiled at her. “Historians are detectives, after all.”

  Lizzie was chilled rather than comforted by the smile. She thought of dolphins, which everyone thought were so friendly because they had that constant smile, but she had seen them once in a feeding frenzy snapping at flying fish that were doing their best to escape.

  “I don’t see how this can be kept private. There is a very determined detective here who is committed to solving this murder.”

  “What is his name?” Cosimo asked, as if he could make a quick phone call and remove the problem from the case.

  “Her name is Ann Crandall,” Lizzie answered.

  “I think that the Boston Police will not want to continue an investigation if the Bolognese Polizia take it over,” he said, “and I am confident they will do that very soon.”

  And then he would be able to control the investigation, Lizzie thought.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Solve the crime,” he said.

  “You make that sound very easy.”

  “Not at all. If it were easy, anyone could do it. I think that it requires special skills and you have them.” He told her that she should take it as a compliment.

  She was about to speak again, but he stopped her.

  “I don’t blame you for any of this,” he said. “I know that you and Carmine Moreale both behaved in the most professional way. I know that it was the negligence of my idiot nephew Beppe that caused this.”

  Lizzie thanked him for the acknowledgement. “We’re not really going to dinner, are we?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered. “And I never eat Italian food when I am abroad.”

  Lizzie opened the door before Cosimo was able to alert the driver, and stepped outside the car. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

  He gave her the smile again and she jumped like a flying fish.

  Chapter 30

  Martin was surprised when Lizzie arrived home. “I thought you were dining with the Godfather,” he said.

  “You don’t know how close yo
u are on that,” she said. “At one point this evening I thought I would end up sleeping with the flying fishes.”

  “That bad?

  “Both Cosimo Gonzaga and Father O’Toole think that I can solve a murder that probably happened fifty years ago, in a country where I don’t even speak the language. And they think that I can do it before my exhibit opens, a time when I am more busy than I have ever been.”

  “Can you?”

  Lizzie laughed a “ha ha ha ha” laugh.

  “Tell me everything you know about this crime so far,” Martin said.

  “All right,” Lizzie said. “I feel like I should have a white board behind me, and photographs of suspects—but the victim’s face is obscured by pitch-infused linen bandages, and the only photos I have are of an alligator, a couple of lizards, and some valuable artifacts.”

  “Do you think this murder has anything to do with the collection?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “The war, maybe.” She wished that for just a moment she could peek into Detective Crandall’s notebook. She tried to recall what Ann had said about the victim. She had had dental work done in Germany in the 1930s, and again in Switzerland in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

  “She was killed after the war,” Lizzie said, thinking aloud. “The only person I can think of who fits the bill is Greta Winkler, or Hoffman, who was a friend of Gianna’s at school, and who Patrick fell in love with one summer. She married the Nazi officer who raped and murdered Gianna.”

  “Do you have any evidence that Patrick wanted to kill this Greta?”

  “No, but Archie might have. Patrick said that Archie thought Greta had informed on Gianna to her husband.”

  “That sounds like a motive to me,” Martin said.

  “Yes, but where is the opportunity?” Lizzie responded. “If this happened after the war, then Greta must have been back in Germany. Why would he drag her back to Bologna to mummify her? And besides,” she added with diminishing enthusiasm, “There must be lots of other women with German dentalwork who were murdered in Bologna after the war. For all I know Colonel Hoffman might have had a Bavarian housekeeper, Wanda Schiertz, who fits that description.”

  “Did he have such a housekeeper?”

  “How the hell would I know? Or it might have been an Italian woman who was a collaborator with the Nazis and was killed in retaliation after the war.”

  “Do you have a name for her too?”

  “Let’s call her Gianamaria Pipsicatto. My point is, I can’t say that it was this Greta woman simply because she is the only one I know of who fits the description. I can’t say it to Detective Crandall, or to Father O’Toole, or to Cosimo Gonzaga, because if it is that woman, then either Archie or Patrick must have killed her, and I cannot even suggest that without having any evidence at all.”

  “I don’t suppose at this point that Patrick could even give a confession.”

  Lizzie sat down and swore. “Oh my God!” she said. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” She looked up at Martin. “Maybe he did! Maybe that last day in the hospital when he gave us the dissertation in Italian. What did he say?”

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t know, it went by so fast and I was just trying to recognize some of the words that I know from Spanish.”

  “But I recorded it,” Lizzie said excitedly. She fished her phone out of her purse and pressed the button to play back the recording of Patrick’s soliloquy. His voice came spilling out of the tiny speaker in Italian.

  “Non avrei mai pensato, come invece ha fatto Archie, che Greta avesse a che fare con la morte di mia sorella. La mamma aveva detto e ridetto ad Archie che Hoffman era un bruto, che aveva picchiato Greta, e che non aveva nessuna privacy nella sua stessa casa, le aveva persino rubato le lettere di Gianna.”

  Lizzie turned it off and shook her fists in the air. “Can you get anything from that?” she asked her husband.

  “I recognize the names Archie, Greta, and Gianna. And some other stuff from Spanish that makes me think you need to get a real translator right away.”

  Lizzie picked up the phone again and called Rose. “I know it’s late,” she apologized, “but do you think I could see your father tonight? It is really important.”

  When Martin heard his wife say that she would be right over, he said “You better call Jackie. If there is something important on that recording she will want to be there when it gets translated.”

  Lizzie made the call and the two of them sped to Tony’s house. Rose was already there and Jackie arrived a few minutes later.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I made a recording of Patrizio Gonzaga when I was in Bologna, and I need to have Tony translate it from Italian to English for me.”

  “What is it about?” Tony asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Lizzie said, “but I think it is important.”

  They sat around Tony’s dining room table and Lizzie put her phone in the middle. Tony suggested that they play it through a speaker and pointed to where Lizzie could fetch one from a nearby shelf. When they were finally ready, Lizzie played the first part and Tony translated what Patrizio Gonzaga had said a few weeks earlier in Bologna:

  “I never thought, like Archie did, that Greta had anything to do with my sister’s death. My mother told Archie over and over that Hoffman was a brute, that he had beaten Greta, that she had had no privacy in her own house, that Hoffman had stolen Gianna’s letters from her.”

  “Who are these people?” Rose asked.

  “Gianna Gonzaga was the daughter of the woman you like to refer to as the Principessa Della Gonzaga,” her father answered. “Archie—Arcangelo Cussetti was her husband. I don’t know who Greta or Hoffman is or was.”

  Lizzie picked up the story. “Greta Winkler was a German woman who became friends with Gianna in a boarding school in Switzerland. Patrick fell in love with her when she came once to visit his sister. She married a Nazi officer, Franz Hoffman, who was stationed in Bologna during the war.” She found herself unable to go on.

  “Hoffman ordered the rape and murder of Gianna,” Martin said softly.

  “What is on this tape?” Tony asked.

  Lizzie told him that she had recorded Patrick speaking at his nursing home. “If you don’t mind, can you just translate, rather than have me speculate about what he said?”

  Tony agreed that made sense and they went on, with the old man translating.

  “My mother was in contact with Greta, I knew that, but she never told Archie, because his anger was so ferocious. But Greta wanted to see my mother. She had moved to Switzerland after the war and wrote to Mama, begging her to let her come to Bologna. When she agreed, Mama had to tell Archie.

  “‘I’ll meet her at the station,’ Archie said. Mama was very stern with him. She didn’t want him to meet her; she wanted to go herself but my sister-in-law was having a baby that very day—Cosimo’s wife, and she was old to be having a baby and it was her first.” The voice changed and Patrizio said in a deep rasp, “All this happened on the day my nephew Cosimo was born, I never thought of that before.” There was a brief silence before he continued. “‘You must not hurt Greta,’ my mother said to Archie, and then she demanded that I go with him. She knew I had loved Greta, and I think she thought I would protect her from Archie, and I would have, not only because I had loved her, but because my mother so rarely trusted me to do anything of consequence.” There was a loud cough on the recording as Patrick cleared his throat and continued.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I saw her, she had aged so. It was fifteen years since I had last seen her. She had been something special, not just pretty but una personalita’ effervescente, she shimmered with vitality, with flirtatiousness. But that was gone when I saw her on that train platform. She had become dull, flat, as if the life had gone out of her. I wondered what I
had loved in her and then wondered if Hoffman had somehow sucked it out of her, or stomped it out. Or if it was just the war that had made her dead inside, like it had so many of us. And it must have been even worse for Germans because their crimes were so horrific.

  “I didn’t know what her crimes had been, but when she came to me with her arms outstretched, looking for me to embrace her, I stepped back; I could not do it. I don’t know if it was the way she looked, or the intense hatred of her that Archie generated like a fog around him, but I felt sorry for Greta then, because she just seemed to deflate. She could feel that energy of rage that emanated from Archie, and she shrunk even more into herself. She followed us meekly to the car, and then Archie drove us up to a cave in the hills that we had used during our days of hiding.

  “We hadn’t made a plan to go there, but he said he wanted to show her how Gianna had lived during the war. ‘That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’ His voice was so harsh that Greta cowered, shrinking away from him, and honestly, even I was afraid.

  “Greta looked at me with terrified eyes and reached out a hand to me but I did not respond, and now I think of it with shame.

  “Archie indicated that she should go into the cave and when she turned to follow his instructions, she stood tall again, resolute.

  “Everything after that happened so quickly I could hardly comprehend it. We were not far into the cave when Archie pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot Greta in the head.”

  There was a sob on the recording and a hush in the room.

  “The blood spurted out in a torrent on me and Archie and her body just crumpled. I went to her side and she looked right at me, but she was dead. I could not help thinking then that she was a woman I had loved.”

  Tony’s hand shook as he turned off the recording and they all sat silently when he had translated the last phrase.